News / Polish MEP Korwin-Mikke's latest outrage, insulting women [216]

Gregy, here's a good starting point for you if you want to argue your points from a more knowledgeable position. There is a lot of rubbish on the internet but if you know where to look there are some good sources:

victorianweb.org/gender/femeconov.html

For example in Scotland in coal pits such as Loanhead in Midlothian in the 1680s or Bo'ness in West Lothian during the 1760s women outnumbered men by two to one.

Just read one short article from that site each day and you'll have a great many more facts at your fingertips than you do now, instead of just having opinions that you've picked up out of the ether, you'll have real knowledge and you can form an opinion based on facts which carries a lot more intellectual weight. Please give it a try, you'll find it interesting.

News / Polish MEP Korwin-Mikke's latest outrage, insulting women [216]

Do you know something Gregy there is hope for you, but you really need to read, read, read and educate yourself. Decent books of social history now, not some old rubbish on the internet. You're obviously capable, remember that 119 IQ :)) And you can crank that up to 125 if you get yourself a book of MENSA puzzles, honestly they're great fun. As to the reading, you'll find that discovering the complex layers of the truth, is much more interesting than your present state of mind.


No pet, that wasn't one college, that was for the whole country.

News / Polish MEP Korwin-Mikke's latest outrage, insulting women [216]


No. They're still two of the leading universities in the world. But during the men only days there was always a tradition of admitting dimwits from aristrocratic families, particularly with Cambridge. They were usually awarded third class honours, such classification becoming known derisively as 'a gentleman's degree'.


Except the stats show the opposite and you haven't produced anything to show otherwise. Just a load of old jaw like a sheep's head.

News / Polish MEP Korwin-Mikke's latest outrage, insulting women [216]


Well now according to the 'male' in question, Charles Babbage regarding the Analytical Engine:

"The notes of the Countess of Lovelace extend to about three times the length of the original memoir," Babbage wrote later. "Their author has entered fully into almost all the very difficult and abstract questions connected with the subject."

News / Polish MEP Korwin-Mikke's latest outrage, insulting women [216]

Gregy, I really don't like to say this but you actually appear to be not the brightest.

However, I am putting some faith in the 119 IQ score and I will persevere for a little longer.

Once upon a time, men and women had distinct roles and nature fitted them for such. Man was the hunter and provider which enabled the family to survive, woman was the bearer and carer of the children and the keeper of the home while the man was away. Gradually over time, society changed and we moved from that very basic way of life and began to develop in many different ways. Women were often not given the same opportunities as men for education but those who were all showed themselves equally capable.

Still, whatever they achieved in private, women were barred from pursuing those things publicly. For example until quite recently, about a hundred years ago women were allowed to study at Oxford or Cambridge and took the same courses as the men, but were not allowed to graduate with a degree. Maria Montessori (I'm a Montessori trained teacher) born in 1870 was the first woman in Italy to qualify as a medical doctor. Originally she wanted to do engineering and had to attend a boy's school to get access to the maths she needed. She was refused admittance to university to study medicine and her father forbade it any case but she kept on and on until they finally agreed and she graduated with the highest honours of all the students. Have you ever heard the term 'bluestocking'? It was a derisive term used contemptously about intellecutal women who were seen as unnatural and an affront to nature. Women were actively discouraged from showing or developing their intelligence.

Your argument is that women are a bit thick so they can't do anything and that history proves it whereas history proves nothing of the kind. It merely proves that women did not have the opportunities to do things to the same extent as men and that those who did were not widely written about or publicised. But, as I say, if you want to, you can find a very long list of educated and gifted women throughout history who managed to rise above the limitations imposed on them by society. But you don't want to, do you?

News / Polish MEP Korwin-Mikke's latest outrage, insulting women [216]


The Leaving Certificate is not a college test. It's a culmination of your five or six years of secondary education and most students in Ireland take around ten subjects at either ordinary of advanced level so it's quite demanding. I agree however that these kinds of exams only paint part of a picture but the reasons that girls excel are worth looking at: more self-disciplined, better organised, more widely read and with better language skills giving them the edge in subjects such as English, History, Geography etc


And refuting is precisely what you're doing yourself. Refuting results that don't support your theory but unable to come up with any concrete evidence to support your own views.

However much you dislike it Gregy, we need some measure of determining at least, an individual's potential, and formal testing is used to decide that when it comes to allocating university places.

Now back to the stats. In Ireland in 2006,of those accepted for study on an Honours Bachelor Degree, 61 per cent of females had scored at least 450 entry points in comparison to 39 per cent of males. So we can say that undoubtedly girls are more studious and are going on to further education with more knowledge of their subjects than the boys entering the same degree courses.

Humanites and the arts remain the most popular subject choice for both sexes which indicates that though men outnumber women in the the sciences they are still more likely to choose the arts. In the UK and Ireland stats show that there is no significant difference in terms of those graduating with First Class Honours or Upper Seconds, some years it's slightly more men, sometimes more women. In the UK in 2009 for example 88% of female students on the Masters in Physics received a First compared to 87% of males so virtually equal.

You're trying to create an artificial intelligence gap between men and women that simply doesn't exist. There is no solid evidence to support your theory and plenty of evidence to contradict it.

Now, did you read up about Ada Lovelace? 'Oh yeah, big deal, she was just one woman, blah, blah'. One woman who might be described as the mother of computer science.

News / Polish MEP Korwin-Mikke's latest outrage, insulting women [216]


Here you go:

independent.ie/irish-news/education/exams/girls-make-the-grade-again-with-more-as-than-boys-in-leaving-cert-34977861.html

And I quote from the above as you clearly won't bother to read it:

Among 32 Leaving Certificate higher-level subjects, girls produced proportionately more As in 25 of them.
Even in subjects such as engineering, which might be considered traditionally 'male', female candidates edged ahead.
Technology is one of the subjects where the gap in A grades was most pronounced, with 16pc of girls getting the top mark, compared with 12pc of boys.

So in Ireland anyway girls are 'better' at almost everything. But as the article points out it's not just Ireland, it's a worldwide phenomenon.

News / Polish MEP Korwin-Mikke's latest outrage, insulting women [216]


Did you read either of the links about exam results? With your IQ of 119 you are capable of understanding more than you appear to. That's 19 points above average so you clearly have the capability to think logically but your posts would suggest otherwise.

It's not a question of either women or men being 'better' than each other. It's just recognising that each sex is equally capable. Having said that nature has designed us over time to fulfil certain roles and we undoubtedly still show that in certain innate qualities that we posess.



Those things are to some degree subjective and can't always be judged in terms of good, better and best. Obviously there are a number of women in the modern world who are successful in these areas but come on Gregy you can't be that ignorant surely?? Women writers?? The list is too long to catalogue here. As for other art and music there have always been women artists and musicians. They just didn't receive the publicity that men have so unless you're a very widely read person you won't know about them. Also there were many gifted women who could not publicly carry out those professions because it wasn't considered respectable for women to to do anything other than sit at home and sew a fine seam. If you bother to do a quick Google (which of course you won't, because like so many you are a genuine ignoramus having little or no knowledge and not wanting to acquire any) then you'll find a very long list of such women going back centuries.

As for computer science, one word - ADA. Look it up as once again you obviously know nothing about it. As a matter of interest, what DO you actually know about? I mean, do you know anything of substance about anything at all?


Ah yes now that's interesting. I'm afraid that both sexes are equally susceptible to marketing and advertising. Did you know there's no such thing as bisexual? It's just something that was invented to sell more hair products :) Personally price pre litre/kilo would influence me far more than the colour of the bottle.

News / Polish MEP Korwin-Mikke's latest outrage, insulting women [216]

Oh absolutely. If you read the article about third level degree choices that's exactly what one of the teachers says:

"As regards technology or engineering I can talk about it 'til I'm blue in the face because girls want to 'work with people.' "They think if they do science or engineering it will not be as people-centred."

News / Polish MEP Korwin-Mikke's latest outrage, insulting women [216]

Oh and one more thing. Let's not underestimate the importance of emotional intelligence and social skills at both of which women tend to outstrip men. From my own personal observations of children during my teaching years, you see this gap begin to emerge very early on. At the age of three boys and girls are very similar, by the time they reach their fourth birthday it's a different story. The girls are far more verbal and use their words to communicate with each other. The boys are still very physical and often play together with hardly a word exchanged but lots of body contact. If two or three girls are working together for example to build something from Lego, they will discuss what they're doing 'Let's put the big red one on top' 'No, leave it, it's going to fall over' etc The boys will work in silence with an occasional yell of protest, grabbing from each other and squeals of joy when something has gone well. Very basic, caveman stuff.

The girls also begin to show empathy. They're still too young to really be genuinely empathic but they are much quicker to imitate the behaviour of their mothers. So, watch four year old children at play in the school yard. Somebody falls over, the boys generally either don't notice at all, or simply stop for a moment, stare and move on. But with the girls there will always be a few who go over straight away 'are you ok?' Then they help the other child up and very often put an arm around them, pat their shoulder, stroke their head and make sympathetic noises.

The girls are so much quicker too, to read other people's moods and in particular to read the teacher's mood! They understand a whole set of unwritten rules that go right over the heads of boys of that age. Here's a typical example. I was on yard supervision duty, there was an incident and I was scolding a boy of about five for his part in it. An interested girl, from the year below him (so four years old) was watching. When I'd finished reading the riot act, I concluded in a very stern voice 'Now I don't want to see that behaviour again. Do you understand?' The boy just stared at me with open mouth, clearly still having no real idea of what he's done wrong. Girl steps forward, digs him in the ribs with her elbow and mutters 'Say yes!' :D

Now fast forward twenty years to the workplace and the story is the same ;)

News / Polish MEP Korwin-Mikke's latest outrage, insulting women [216]


And yet, strangely, bearing in mind that boys and girls sit the same exam papers:

independent.ie/irish-news/education/exams/girls-do-it-again-with-better-grades-in-leaving-cert-31450666.html

irishtimes.com/opinion/why-do-girls-outperform-boys-in-the-leaving-cert-1.2317485

And here's a rather long but interesting article as to why girls don't opt for science and maths based options at third level.Bear in mind that in Ireland there is almost an equal number of girls and boys taking higher/advanced maths. So why do so few of those girls go on to take a maths based degree when they're clearly capable of it:

irishexaminer.com/lifestyle/features/why-are-girls-not-choosing-it-courses-at-third-level-379396.html

Although the examples given are from Ireland, apparently these kind of stats are reflected elsewhere.

News / Polish MEP Korwin-Mikke's latest outrage, insulting women [216]

What I find most objectionable about the guy is his outrageous views about child pornography. On the one hand he advocates punishing child abusers severely and on the other, legalising child porn. Of course this would be ok according to his nibs because it would be computer generated, not involving any actual living children.

History / What do Poles think about Turks? [761]


I answered you in Random Chat :)

Work / Is 400000PLN per year a very high salary in Poland? If so, what kind of job can make this money? [33]

Yes, but the OP asked about salaries/working for a company, not income of the self-employed or investors.

Off-Topic / Being a Slav: a blessing or a curse? [199]

Thanks for that Crnog :)

It's quite weird to hear it sung with that fabulously foreign accent! There's a Serbian Irish dance troupe too. They're very good. I don't know how authentic the Orthodox Celts want to be, our whether they want to put their own spin on the style but that song should be sung with a lilting rhythm, not so 'straight' if you know what I mean. If you're interested, here's a version by the Irish Rovers which is quite similar in its arrangement but you will hear that it swings' a lot more. I wonder how the Serbian band learned the tunes, just from avaialbe recordings I suppose, have they ever been to Ireland do you know? They'd get a great welcome.

youtube.com/watch?v=Gqrf-T9q0Vk

Have you ever seen this Irish band from the seventies, Horslips, with their kind of Celtic rock thing? They did original stuff with themes inspired by the Celtic legends. People either love them or hate them, the hair, the flares, a thing of legend indeed, one of them looks as if he's wearing his sister's necklace :D

youtube.com/watch?v=y5G8AJf4Xzw

Off-Topic / Being a Slav: a blessing or a curse? [199]

You might be interested in Newgrange (Gaelic name Brú na Bóinne, meaning Bend of the Boyne, the nearby river). It's about a thousand years older than Stonehenge and a few hundred years older than the Pyramids. The immediate area around it has been inhabited for at least six thousand years. When it was originally built, it was aligned with the sun so that it would hit the floor of the innermost chamber, illuminating the interior exactly at sunrise on the Winter Solstice. Over time that has changed, so that it now occurs a few minutes later but the chamber remains illuminated for 17 minutes.

newgrange.com

Food / Kefir drink in Poland [79]

I should point out that it's not a one-off, fix it solution though. The TB management system in Ireland is continuous, it's been running since the 1950s so it's just a normal part of where our taxes go.

Food / Kefir drink in Poland [79]



If you mean bovine TB and Brucelosis I've already paid that bill! It was finally eliminated from Irish herds a few years ago. No idea what the situation is in Poland, would you know?

Food / Kefir drink in Poland [79]


Well firstly Dominic, I myself do not drink milk of any kind, I loathe and detest it and always have done. However, I do feel that people should be able to drink it they want to and in fact in Ireland where I come from, we can still do so. There was a proposed ban back in 2011/2012 but it was defeated and now raw milk can, in theory be bought anywhere, including retail outlets. To be honest, in Ireland it's somewhat different, because our milk and dairy produce is of exceptional quality as the small herds are raised in virtually organic conditions, fed entirely on grass and clover in open air pastures the whole year round.

Food / Kefir drink in Poland [79]

Yes, here's one Mlekomat supplier, the link is in English and it clearly states that it's milk straight from the cow'.

mlekomat.com/en/

There are also numerous articles online about ones that have closed down. What a shame. It's probably lack of an advertising and marketing budget (Polish small businesses are very weak in that area in any case) so not able to draw enough customers.

Food / Kefir drink in Poland [79]


If you read the comments, somebody who lives in Italy points out that these machines are mostly in rural areas and located close to farms, so I would conclude that they are indeed filled with genuine raw milk.


Well there are certainly farms in England who deliver unpasteurised milk to the doorstep and Hook & Son supplied raw milk to Selfridges in London, which is a huge department store:

hookandson.co.uk/Selfridges/index.html

However it's been withdrawn because of the dithering of the FSA.

In England, Wales and NI farms can sell either at the farm, at farmers' markets or through a doorstep delivery service but they're not allowed to supply supermarkets. There are about two hundred raw milk distributors in the UK.

Food / Kefir drink in Poland [79]


You're absolutely right that there is a market for such products and EU regulations regarding unpasteurized products permit their sale as long they're clearly marked as such. We do it in Ireland. You can get 'real' buttermilk in any supermarket there:

ireland-guide.com/article/cuinneog.9273.html
You can buy 'real' dairy produce in Warsaw from what Mr Atch calls 'villagers' ie street sellers but of course you don't know in what conditions it's been produced, levels of hygiene etc and it's often transported to town in un-refridgerated vans, not to mention during the summer, sitting all day on the street in the sun! Probably still ok for healthy adults but a bit risky for kids and older people.

Food / Kefir drink in Poland [79]

I just came across this very interesting explanation of fermented milk products.
milkingredients.ca/index-eng.php?id=180

Food / Kefir drink in Poland [79]


Zsiadłe mleko is what we used to call curds and whey in the British Isles, remember the nursery rhyme? Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet, eating her curds and whey. Maślanka is buttermilk.


Would have to say that's debatable. They're good certainly but I think they're pretty zwykłe, nothing special, just the best of a bad lot. Dairy produce in Poland is disappointing. Krasnystaw seems better. My husband drinks their kefir, we have a few bottles in the fridge and I checked the ingredients, it does actually contain kefir grains, BUT, also bacterial cultures and wait for this, powdered milk!! How could they!

Food / Kefir drink in Poland [79]

You can buy unpasteurized milk and make authentic zsialdłe mleko at home. You can get it at the targowisko/bazarek type places. Just put the milk in a bowl, cover it with a tea towel and leave it in a warm place for a couple of days and Bob's you Uncle. You get a few spoons of thick, rich cream on the top and then the other nauseating stuff beneath! I don't like it all but my husband loves it.

Off-Topic / Being a Slav: a blessing or a curse? [199]


I'm not suggesting that the whole of the east is barren. Of course not. I was thinking more of people migrating westwards from places like Siberia. It is extraordinary when you think about it though, isn't it, that anybody would make their way as far west as Ireland, four thousand years ago! I mean, surely to goodness, with the amount of pasture available between the Pontic Steppes and Ireland, there was more than enough grazing land for everybody, given the tiny population of the world back then.

Off-Topic / Being a Slav: a blessing or a curse? [199]


Well it could of course, I don't know enough about it to speculate but a quick bit of googling will sort that out :)) Off the top of my head I'd just say that if people can travel from east to west over a continent, there's no reason why they couldn't go the other way but it makes more sense that they would go from the colder and more barren regions of the east towards the warmer and more fertile ones of the west.

Off-Topic / Being a Slav: a blessing or a curse? [199]

Fair point Ziem! I should say from the Steppe region corresponding to modern day Russia and Ukraine.

Basically Crow is right when he says that the ancestry of many Europeans originates in the East in as much as it's been found that about half of the DNA of most Northern Europeans comes from the Steppe region.

Off-Topic / Being a Slav: a blessing or a curse? [199]

Well it's certainly true that the Irish do have some verified Slavic DNA. A couple of years ago they found the remains of some women who lived in Ireland around 4,000 years ago and they discovered when they tested them that they had Russian and Ukrainian ancestors. The funny thing is that there is a disease called haemochromatosis very common in Irish people, I think they call it the Celtic curse but apparently it came from our Slavic origins. My Polish husband had a blood test when he was in Ireland for something else entirely and they found potential signs of it in his blood. It was at manageable levels but they told him to be careful and not eat too much iron in his diet.

Law / Hiring a Polish Worker - Pros and Cons [107]


To be honest this post sounds like trolling. Why would you expect people to work weekends and late nights unless it's shift work, and why ask them to clean the floor unless they are employed as cleaners? As CMS said, all that should be in the contract of employment in the first place. That's how a civilised society functions.

This sounds like total rubbish. There are always people who are happy to do extra hours or unsocial hours if it's properly paid. Of course if you're expecting people to do extra time at your whim for the love of your business, then you deserve to be 'disappointed'.


What medical training?? Do you think this guy is a doctor or other medical professional? Somehow I very much doubt it. Probably used to be a sales rep in pharmaceuticals, or medical equipment or something and yes, as a result of that, would certainly have put in plenty of hours, but 'medical training' no.